Tillerson to tour Gulf capitals as US seeks to end spat

Bloomberg

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will travel to Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia this week to meet with Gulf leaders as the US seeks to help end a standoff that pits US allies against one another.
Tillerson will shuttle between Persian Gulf capitals from Monday to Thursday, US State Department spokesman R.C. Hammond said. The diplomacy is part of a bid by Tillerson to bridge the differences between Qatar and the four-nation Saudi bloc that has isolated it, Hammond said.
“We’ve had one round of exchanges and dialogue and didn’t advance the ball,” Hammond said. “We will work with Kuwait and see if we can hash out a different strategy.”
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic and transport links with Qatar, the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas, on June 5. The alliance accuses Qatar of destabilizing the region by supporting proxies of Shiite-dominant Iran as well as Sunni extremists, charges the sheikdom has denied.
The Gulf flare-up has put the U.S. in a difficult position. It’s allied with nations on both sides of the dispute. Qatar hosts the regional headquarters for the US Central Command, which includes a state-of-the-art air base the Pentagon depends on to target IS. Saudi Arabia has strong counter-terrorism ties with the US and is the top buyer of American weapons. Ahead of his visit, an American defense official said the US has seen no indication that the crisis will lead to an armed conflict between the nations involved. The official asked not to be identified given the sensitivity of the subject.

Ease Tensions
State Department officials have said they are skeptical that the crisis will be resolved immediately, but are looking for ways to ease tensions between the countries. While the U.S. has deferred to Kuwait as the main mediator, Tillerson may use the relationships he forged with the Gulf oil producers when he was chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp. to bring them closer together.
The standoff shows no signs of ending. Qatar rejected 13 demands by the Saudi-led alliance to end the crisis, a move the allies say demonstrates its links to terrorist groups. The Saudi-led grouping said the demands were “null and void” and pledged new political, economic and legal measures against the Gulf nation.

Tillerson: Syria progress could be replicated with Turkey
Bloomberg

The US and Turkey are beginning to rebuild trust and could come to an agreement about northern Syria, where the US backs a Kurdish militia that Turkey considers a terrorist organization, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told staff at the US consulate-general in Istanbul.
“I think we’re beginning to rebuild some of that trust that we lost in one another: they lost our trust to a certain extent, we lost theirs,” Tillerson said on Monday while in Istanbul to attend an oil conference. “We’re making some progress down in Syria, we’re hopeful that we can replicate that with Turkey on some areas in the north part of Syria.”
Tillerson’s remarks come after a meeting in Hamburg between President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin delivered a cease-fire in southwest Syria. Putin, the most significant backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, called the deal a “breakthrough” on July 9. In a tweet the following day, Trump said the cease-fire seemed to be holding and “many lives can be saved.”